Immigrant ARC Condemns Executive Action on the Border
New York, NY - June 4, 2024 - Today, President Biden signed an executive action that places severe and inhumane limits on migrants’ access to asylum at the United States’ southern border with Mexico. The action also states that when the daily average of encounters at the border surpasses 2,500, authorities can rapidly deport asylum seekers back to their home countries if they are seeking asylum between ports of entry––effectively closing the border for short periods of time.
Immigrant ARC unequivocally condemns this action and is outraged by President Biden’s craven decision to revert to the previous administration’s discriminatory practices and appease the anti-immigrant voices in Congress who have been attacking the right to asylum for months. It is morally bankrupt of the Biden administration and Congress to sacrifice the rights of people who have been displaced by political instability, climate change, poverty, corruption, and violence, much of which can be tied to past US government intervention, and who have to go through unimaginable danger to find safety, for political gain.
We urge President Biden and Congress to stop engaging with this false fear-based narrative of danger at our borders and respond to the actual needs of our country and immigration system. Our immigration system is broken and it is not only failing our country’s immigrants but is also failing our country. The United States could benefit massively by opening the door to new innovators, entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, and military personnel, not to mention workers in all agricultural, industrial, and service industries. This is why instead of further closing the few avenues for immigration relief and creating tortuous bottlenecks in our immigration process––our country should be creating new more expansive legal pathways, simplifying our entry procedures at the border, and ensuring our nation continues its legacy as a thriving home to immigrants.
Let us be clear, people fleeing have a legal right to apply for asylum based on US law, and decisions like today’s set our country back and make it that much more difficult to make the meaningful changes needed.
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Immigrant ARC is a collaborative of over 80 organizations and professional associations providing legal services to New York’s immigrant communities throughout the State. Born out of the legal effort at JFK Airport during the Muslim Travel Ban in 2017, our mission is clear: to mobilize New York State’s legal service providers by facilitating communication and information sharing to better support our immigrant communities; to organize and respond to issues as they arise by coordinating resources and fostering best practices among providers; and to resist and challenge anti-immigrant policies by shining a light on injustices and confronting inequalities faced by our communities in the legal system.
